What is happening. What is happening? What is happening!
The Canucks—incredibly, improbably, inconceivably—have won three straight games to start the season, all while never actually leading for a single second of game time. As a reminder, the Canucks didn’t win three games in a row last season until April.
Heck, last season the Canucks only won three games total after trailing heading into the third period. They’ve already matched that total just three games into the season!
Sure, this method of winning games is less sustainable than the city of Phoenix and the Canucks are bound to start losing a bunch of games if they don’t start taking the occasional lead. But I didn’t watch those hypothetical future games. I watched this game.
- Kudos to the Rogers Arena crowd who launched into the national anthem when the anthem singer, Jim Byrnes, had his mic cut out. You even managed to mostly be singing the same part by the time you got to “with glowing hearts.” Nicely done! No seriously, no sarcasm, that was great.
- The best story heading into this game was the emergency call-up of UBC goaltender Matt Hewitt due to a mild groin injury for Ryan Miller. There were a couple Chris Levesque moments, where Hewitt might have held his breath: Alex Steen hit Jacob Markstrom in the head while cutting through the crease and Patrik Berglund crashed into Markstrom after losing his balance on a breakaway, but Markstrom was unfazed and Hewitt didn’t get press-ganged into action.
- Jack Skille, on the other hand, did get into his first game as a Canuck and, like an english student asked to read William Carlos Williams, he got a plum assignment, skating on a line with Bo Horvat and Sven Baertschi. That meant Jake Virtanen was in the pressbox and you have to wonder if it has something to do with how he shoved Joacim Nordstrom’s head into the boards last game. Poor Virtanen can’t catch a break: first it’s don’t hang out with Justin Bieber, now it’s don’t slam people’s heads into the boards. When will the oppression end?
- Skille, by the way, nearly got hit in the eye by a high stick in the first period. Hey Jack: wear a visor, you goofus. Manny Malhotra, talk some sense into this guy.
- The Granny Line of Markus Granlund, Brandon Sutter, and Jannik Hansen has been so much fun to watch the last couple games. They’re ostensibly a shutdown line, but the Jar of Assorted Cookies Line, led by Hansen’s speed and tenacity, keep creating offensive chances with a strong forecheck and winning battles along the boards. Whatever else happens to the lineup over the next few games, the Doilies on Every Flat Surface of the House Line should stay together.
- The Knits Everyone Slippers Line seemed to open the scoring with a lovely set up for Luca Sbisa. Sutter found Hansen open at the backdoor, but he showed his apprenticeship with the Sedins by adhering to the Third Law of Sedinery and making one more pass than was necessary, centring for a hard-charging Sbisa. Unfortunately, it was ruled a no-goal for the entirely unfair reason that Sbisa blatantly kicked the puck into the net. This is, my friends, an outrage.
- This was obviously a low-scoring game, but both teams were unlucky not to score more. Granlund hit a post on a wide-open net, while Bo Horvat did the same after a gorgeous Bo-Ho-toe-drag. At the other end, Jacob Markstrom got some luck to go with his strong outing when Nail Yakupov shot the puck into his pad while he was looking the wrong way. Sorry for the ambiguous pronoun in that sentence: Markstrom was looking the wrong way, though it would explain the lousy shot if Yakupov was too.
- After a stingy first two periods, the Canucks opened things up in the third to come back from the 1-0 deficit. Philip Larsen jumped up to Edler’s pairing, just like last game, but it ended up being the stay-at-home Erik Gudbranson who assisted on the tying goal, firing a point shot through a Horvat screen that created a rebound for a Horvat stick that was tucked into a Horvat net. Yes, Horvat now owns the opponent’s net. He bought it off Craigslist.
- Daniel Sedin never left the ice for the 1:40 that overtime lasted, breaking up ice when Markstrom tossed the puck out of his glove to keep the play alive and executing a lovely give-and-go with Chris Tanev. Daniel waited until Blues goaltender Jake Allen committed to stopping a shot that was never going to come, then found Henrik at the back door for the gentlest of tap-ins, rolling the puck ever-so-slowly off the post and in.
- The goal was initially credited to Tanev, which meant that Markstrom originally got credited with an assist. But, since Henrik was the one who actually scored, the assist was taken away from Markstrom, because, as everyone knows, only a maximum of three people can contribute to a goal. It’s science.
- Finally, this has nothing to do with the Canucks game, but it’s the best thing that happened in the NHL Tuesday night: Dmitry Orlov (the namesake of my fantasy team, Orlov is a Verb, last year) sent Matt Duchene flying with one of the greatest hip checks you will ever see. This is magnificent.
